Home
I’m sitting at work yesterday, trying to catch up on my work between phone calls, and I get an email from Die-Tech: “I need a new blog from you please, my life has dulled in the wake of no new blog from you in 14 days!“
At least he asked politely.
I should apologize for being so lazy and not updating my blog for more than 2 weeks. I do have a good goddamned excuse though. I was busy dying of pneumonia. Once again, I contracted “the pneumonia” and it landed me in the hospital. I couldn’t fully breathe, I was coughing more than a Volkswagen Rabbit burning ARCO gas, and was running a temperature that was a degree or two below the surface temperature of Venus. The picture here is of my digital thermometer two tenths lower than my highest temperature of 103.1°F (39.5°C).
I went to the ER of Whidbey General Hospital, where they took my temperature, blood pressure, hooked me up to oxygen, connected me to a heart monitor, and drew what seemed to be a gallon of blood for testing. After the sixth vial of blood, I joked with the vampire tech, “If you take any more, I might need a donut and a glass of juice.” He didn’t think that was funny at all. He didn’t even crack a smile. What a great bedside manner.
After a bunch of waiting, and waiting, and waiting, an X-ray technician named Vu came to take me to the X-ray department. He wheeled my hospital bed down the hallways like he was driving his rice burner down I-5. If I had hair, it would have been a blowin’ in the breeze. They have a new digital X-ray machine at WGH, so after a two quick snapshots of my lungs, Vu pushed my bed back to the ER like he was in the M*A*S*H Olympics. (Remember that episode?)
Six days later, or what seemed like six days later, Nurse Dave came in with two pills and a needle. The pills were 500mg each of Zithromax, and the needle was a pint of pudding. Okay, maybe it wasn’t pudding, but Nurse Dave jabbed that thing in my right arm and injected some thick-ass antibiotic into the muscle. That needle was in my arm for a long time. When I got home later that night, I was bruised to hell around the injection site, and it felt like a there was a golf ball under the skin. Fuck!
The doctor finally came back in and said he was going to send me home only because the hospital had no open beds. They sent me home with an oxygen tank. Yes, like some old cigar-smoking septuagenarian, they wanted me to tote around an oxygen tank with one of those nasal cannulas wrapped around my ears and stuck up my nose. Who am I, Mick Jagger? Pass the Geritol.
When I went into the ER, my O2 saturation was 84%. Pretty low. They put me on two liters per minute, and my sat level went up two percent to 86%. They pushed the rate to four liters per minute and it didn’t really help. So why would they send me home with a tank prescribed at two liters per minute? Maybe I’m a cynical fucker, but I think they just wanted to jack my final bill up. My insurance is good, but not that good. I took the tank home, but didn’t turn it on. I had the home medical supply company take it from the house as soon as they could. I need to get the phlegm off my lungs in order to get more oxygen and breathe easier. And they call themselves doctors…
I also took home a nebulizer, and a prescription for Zithromax and Albuterol. The nebulizer is basically an aquarium air pump on steroids. It pumps air into the inhaling apparatus which turns the liquid Albuterol medication into a vapor, which is inhaled… like some medication bong… which is not nearly as much fun as a real bong. The Albuterol gives me the jitters and makes me a little ill. The Zithromax was no fun either. I had to take another 1000mg the day after leaving the ER, and 500mg a day for 5 days after that… and it also made me feel a little sick and turned my poo a nice consistency of chocolate pudding.
I missed 7 full days of work, and did a lot of sleeping. I didn’t even look at my laptop during my convalescence. I’m feeling much better, but I still get short of breath just walking down the hall. It’s going to take a long time to heal completely…
